Jules Verne. Scientific discoveries of a science fiction writer

Today, February 8, exactly 190 years have passed since the birth of the famous French writer, founder of the science fiction genre, Jules Verne.

More than one generation has grown up on his books, and you want to re-read many of his works, because every time you discover something new for yourself: as a child you see the struggle between good and evil in the story, as a teenager you notice the romantic and adventurous adventures of the heroes, and while reading telling these same stories to your children, the world of real science fiction opens up to you, which you may not have noticed in childhood.

Jules Verne was amazing at creating the ambiance of the future on the pages of his books: unimaginable inventions, discoveries, and research that the writer created in his imagination. By the way, many of the inventions that the writer talked about at the end of the 19th century actually came to life.

From Moscow to 北京

For example, in 1893, Jules Verne wrote the adventure novel "Claudius Bombarnac", named after the main character - a journalist of a 20th century newspaper, who, on instructions from the editor, sets out to describe a journey along the great Trans-Asian Railway or railway, starting in Uzun-Ada, passing through Russian and Chinese Turkestan and ending in Beijing.

Claudius Bombarnak must leave all business and be in the port of Uzun-Ada on the Caspian Sea on the 15th of this month. There he will board a direct Trans-Asian train connecting the European border with the capital of the Celestial Empire. It is entrusted to convey impressions in the form of chronicle notes, to interview noteworthy persons along the way, to report any incidents in letters or telegrams, depending on the urgency. “XX Century” counts on the diligence, intelligence, and dexterity of its correspondent and provides him with unlimited credit, says the note that the journalist received.

From the point of view of adventure, the novel turned out to be very interesting: the main character meets interesting people along the way, for example, among Bombarnak’s fellow travelers was a German baron who was going to break the world speed record for traveling around the world in 39 days. The journalist constantly gets into various troubles, which draws the reader in, completely immersing him in the picture of what is happening.

But the main scientific feature that Jules Verne predicted is the highway itself connecting Russia and China. Then many were wary of such a fantasy of the writer, but, “science fiction - nothing can be done.” Who would have thought that just 61 years after the novel was written, in 1954, a railway would be built between Moscow and Beijing, which is still in operation: you start from the Yaroslavl station and in just six days you find yourself in Beijing.

In 2015, a project was proposed to build an expressway that would take you to Beijing in just two days, and the train route would pass through the territory of Kazakhstan. This project is planned to be implemented by 2025. By the way, in the novel the journey of the heroes was 13 days.

Around the world

One can only envy the imagination of Jules Verne: 66 novels, about 20 novels and short stories, more than 30 plays - and all are unique works of science fiction. The writer’s favorite theme is travel, without which not a single story is complete, and even in this direction Verne was able to look into the future.

In one of the most popular novels, Around the World in Eighty Days, Jules Verne told the story of the Englishman Phileas Fogg, who, having made a bet of twenty thousand pounds, sets off on a trip around the world, which he plans to complete in just 80 days. Of course, it cannot be done without adventures, love and troubles - this is what a science fiction writer is all about, but the most interesting thing is that in the novel the author suggested that in a couple of years a person will learn to circumnavigate the Earth in just eighty hours.

And here Jules Verne was close to the truth. Now the minimum time for a trip around the world is 72 hours, and this record was set by the Soviet pilot Lev Vasilyevich Kozlov, who was included in the Guinness Book of Records in 1990.

It was a round-the-world plane trip, during which Kozlov and his team flew around the entire globe in 72 hours and 16 minutes. The plane took off from Melbourne, Australia, then flew through the South Pole, refueled in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, crossed the equator, flew over the capital of Morocco and refueled in Casablanca, flew over Kamchatka and returned to Melbourne late for the scheduled arrival time of all by 19 minutes.

And in March 2010, a Swiss pilot set a record by covering this distance in 58 hours on a business class passenger plane.

And to the moon

In his travels, Jules Verne did not forget about space. It is worth recalling his stories “From the Earth to the Moon” (1865) and “Around the Moon” (1870), in which the author described in some detail the process of flying into space, although the actual flight took place almost 100 years later.

If you haven't read these stories, the novels are set in the mid-19th century, and Around the Moon is a sequel to the 1865 book. In the novel From the Earth to the Moon, the founder of the Cannon Club decides to build a cannon, the projectile of which, after being fired, could reach the Moon. Initially, it was planned to make a spherical capsule (projectile) from aluminum, but later it was decided to make a hollow metal cylinder, pointed on one side, as a cannon projectile. A team of three people went to the moon - Captain Nicole, Impey Barbican and Michel Ardant.

The very description of the Columbiad flight surprisingly accurately coincided with the future real flight of the Apollo 8 spacecraft in 1968.

Both spacecraft - both literary and real - had a crew of three people, and their names slightly overlap with the fictional characters: Borman, Lovell and Anders - the names of American astronauts. The dimensions and mass of the two spacecraft are also almost the same: the height of the Columbiada projectile is 3.65 m, weight is 5,547 kg; the height of the Apollo capsule is 3.60 m, weight is 5,621 kg.

The location of Stones Hill in Florida was chosen as the start of the lunar expedition, which is close in location to the modern one. Cape Canaveral Spaceport, where Apollo launched from. We wrote above that Jules Verne first wanted to make the device out of aluminum, which was nonsense at the end of the 19th century, because metal was far from cheap.

Who would have thought that just 100 years later aluminum would be widely used for the needs of the aerospace industry.

Not so dystopian

Another popular novel by Jules Verne is “Paris in the 20th Century,” written in a dystopian style that is rare for a writer. The writer imagined what society would look like in 100 years, in particular Paris. If you don’t go into “Julverne romance” and don’t take into account the fact that, according to the writer, in 1963 there will be neither art nor literature, then he predicted many technical things correctly.

For example, the novel describes in detail the structure of the city: what apartments and houses Parisians live in, what they care about, what stores they go to in their leisure time. The author paid special attention to transport, describing airships, subways, and ships.

The 21st century reader may be amused by thoughts about television or computers, the beginnings of which just began to appear in the era of Jules Verne. In the novel, the author described the prototype of television, as well as the ability to communicate by seeing the interlocutor on the monitor. At the same time, computing operations in banks were performed by special machines similar to bulky computers of the second half of the 20th century.

Walking through the pages of the novel, we come across “electric candelabra” on the Champs Elysees, illuminating huge advertising signs, where an openwork tower floats above the city, which will only be built in 1889. Perhaps Jules Verne imagined some kind of Eiffel Tower.

“The machine makes copies of letters, and 500 employees continuously send them to the addresses.” “A photographic apparatus that allows you to send a facsimile of any text or drawing, sign bills or contracts with a partner located at a distance of 5 thousand leagues,” “It takes a matter of seconds to contact America from Europe.”

Today, for us, a printer, fax, Internet and mobile communications are familiar things, without which it is difficult to imagine modern life, but almost 150 years ago, when Verne wrote his novels, such inventions were still far away.

Descend from heaven to water

For last, we left probably one of the most interesting and controversial predictions of Jules Verne - the high-speed submarines that were described in the novel “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.”

Of course, the history of underwater shipbuilding began in the 17th century, long before the appearance of the French writer, so at the time of writing the novel, Jules Verne had enough material to come up with a fantastic story about the underwater vessel Nautilus and Captain Nemo.

Captain Nemo's ship dived for many kilometers and reached speeds of up to 50 knots, allowing for research of the seabed and effective warfare. To tell the truth, many of the Nautilus’s indicators still look extremely fantastic, but who knows, maybe in another ten years with the development of science we will get closer to Jules Verne’s forecast.

Planes, cars, submarines, the Internet, television - this is only a small part of what Jules Verne predicted. But the writer himself did not like being called a predictor:

These are simple coincidences, and they can be explained very simply. When I talk about some scientific phenomenon, I first examine all the sources available to me and draw conclusions based on many facts. As for the accuracy of the descriptions, in this regard I am indebted to all sorts of extracts from books, newspapers, magazines, various abstracts and reports, which I have prepared for future use and are gradually replenished, wrote the famous author.

For many years now, people have been cherishing the hope of learning how to control the second hands in order to contemplate themselves at least out of the corner of their eyes in the space of the future or to return to the past in order to correct mistakes and dramatically turn their fate around. The very idea of ​​​​the possibility of creating a device capable of transporting people both into the past and into the future was introduced into the consciousness of many people by H. G. Wells’s novel “The Time Machine”. Ever since this book appeared on bookstore shelves, scientists have been trying to penetrate the mystery of time.

“The Time Machine” is the first novel by Herbert George Wells. After the death of the writer, his friend and executor Charles Pink, sorting through papers, came across previously unknown autobiographical notes of the science fiction writer, from which he was surprised to learn that Sir Herbert ended up in a time machine as a child and saw the future with my own eyes! Impressed by this journey, Wells wrote his first novel, The Argonauts of Chronos. In the original version, it was replete with many technical details that seemed far-fetched to the editors. Reluctantly, Sir Herbert remade the book and called it “The Time Machine.”

Despite editors' resistance, Wells left a scene in the introduction to the novel in which the Time Traveler (his name is not mentioned in the story, but in the first draft Wells called him Doctor Sky) explains the theoretical basis of his invention:

“Every real body,” said the Time Traveler, “must have four dimensions: it must have length, width, height and duration of existence. But due to the innate limitations of our mind, we do not notice this fact. And yet there are four dimensions, three of which we call spatial, and the fourth temporal. True, there is a tendency to contrast the first three dimensions with the last, but only because our consciousness, from the beginning of our life to its end, moves jerkily only in one single direction of this last dimension. Time is what is meant by the Fourth Dimension. Time is no different from any of the three spatial dimensions, except that our consciousness moves in time.

This means that if we could look at a person from outside our space-time, we would see at the same time the past, present and future of this person, just as in three-dimensional space we cover with a single glance all parts of a wavy line drawn on a piece of paper. tape with the pen of a recorder repeating the one-dimensional spatial movements of the mercury level in the barometer.”

But here's the amazing thing: reading the Time Traveler's arguments today, you would think that Wells was familiar with Herman Minkowski's magnificent work on the substantiation of Einstein's theory of special relativity. The line along which our consciousness crawls is, of course, our “world line” - the line that we describe in four-dimensional space - Minkowski time, moving in three-dimensional space. But Wells's story, in its final form, appeared fourteen years before Hermann Minkowski published Space and Time, in which he proposed a geometric representation of the kinematics of relativity by introducing four-dimensional pseudo-Euclidean space (now known as "Minkowski space"). In this book, Minkowski proclaimed: “From now on, time in itself and space in itself become an empty fiction, and only their unity preserves the chance for reality.”

Apparently, Wells actually once visited the future and learned so many amazing things there that it was enough for his entire subsequent writing life.

The first readers treated the novel as a fantasy, but over time, people discovered that the writer’s 76 books contained a lot of extremely interesting information that could only be conveyed by looking into the future. In them you can find a description of a combat laser, a household video recorder, traffic jams, tank battles, and even nuclear weapons.

An amazing, unique forecast was the “Wells laser” with which he armed the Martians who invaded our Earth in the novel “War of the Worlds”. Wells wrote that the ray of the Martians, striking all living things, was not divergent! For more than half a century, “custom” physicists mocked the ignorant amateur Wells, since “any ray of light must diverge with distance.” But when the laser was invented, all of Wells' critics were put to shame.

Predicted the atomic bomb

In 1913, Wells completed the novel The Liberation of the World, written under the clear influence of Frederick Soddy, the discoverer of isotopes and winner of the 1921 Nobel Prize in chemistry. In this novel, Wells predicts the invention of... the atomic bomb. By the way, it was he who invented the term “atomic bomb”. Wells uses the artificial element carolinium as a nuclear explosive, apparently this is modern plutonium. In addition, Wells predicts that his atomic bomb is “the forerunner of even more terrible bombs” of a similar class.

There are many places in this novel like these: “...And to this day, the battlefields of that crazy era contain radioactive substances and are centers of the most harmful radiation... Arrow-shaped swallow-like monoplanes circled in the pinkish sky. These airplanes were equipped with atomic engines... five airplanes with atomic bombs... After the atomic explosions, international disputes seemed to lose all meaning.”

However, then Einstein, Niels Bohr, and Rutherford categorically rejected this warning forecast, and the world scientific community conformistly followed the luminaries. But it so happened that Wells lived to see the fulfillment of his terrible prophecies - to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The brilliant visionary died in August 1946.

And then many believed that Wells could really visit the future. And for many years now, futurologists from different countries have been trying to figure out what Wells warned about in the novel “The Time Machine”? What else did he see on his journey into the future? Have the terrible Morlocks appeared somewhere on Earth? And what does this Wellsian metaphor even mean? Will humanity in the future really be divided into two classes - the Eloi, small, beautiful loafers living on the ground, and the Morlocks, reduced to an animal level, working deep underground. And although the Morlocks dress and put on the shoes of the Eloi, the careless Eloi serve as food for the Morlocks, who crawl out of their dungeons “to hunt” at night. The secret of H.G. Wells's "Time Machine" has not yet been solved...

But perhaps this is just a metaphor for the future world order. According to the teachings of Indian sages, in the 21st century the world will be divided into two camps, North and South. In the North, life will be quite favorable, it will be a territory of goodness, happiness, and universal mutual support. But the life of those who find themselves in the South will not be very comfortable.

Prophecies of Jules Verne

No fewer predictions are contained in the books of the French science fiction writer Jules Gabriel Verne, who, by the way, would have turned 180 years old in 2008. The heroes of Jules Verne erect beautiful new cities, irrigate barren deserts, accelerate the growth of plants with the help of artificial climate devices, suggest a certain unified nature of chemical elements, invent color photography, sound cinema, an automatic calculating machine, synthetic food products, new building materials, clothing made of glass fiber and many other wonderful things that make a person’s life and work easier and help him transform the world.

It is amazing that Jules Verne was able to guess and describe dozens of scientific inventions, most of which were made after his death. Since the writer did not have any scientific education, one gets the feeling that he was spying on our world and simply describing what he saw in terms that were accessible to the reader of his era. This idea is suggested by the amazing coincidences that exist between the events of the two novels “From the Earth to the Moon” and “Around the Moon” and the circumstances of the real flight to the Moon.

There were three people in Jules Verne's spaceship - three astronauts were on both Apollo 11 and Apollo 12. Verne's fictitious spaceport was located in Cape Town, Florida - near the modern Cape Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, from where Apollo 11 was launched.

Verne's spacecraft was cone-shaped and called the Columbiad, a similar silhouette to the Apollo 12 command module, named Columbia.

Jules Verne calculated that the Columbiad, traveling at a speed of 11 km/s, that is, about 40 thousand km/h, would reach the Moon in 4 days, more precisely, in 97 hours 13 minutes and 20 seconds. “Apollo 11” whose speed was about 39 thousand km/h, reached the Moon after 4 days, 6 hours and 46 minutes.

Like modern Apollos, Vernon's Columbiad was equipped with rocket engines that took the ship out of lunar orbit and served as braking engines when entering the earth's atmosphere.

Both spacecraft landed at almost the same point in the Pacific Ocean.

Is this a coincidence?

Those who are skeptical about the possibility of time travel claim that everything can be calculated and predicted. But how did Verne manage to calculate the cost of flying a spacecraft to the Moon? According to the novel “From the Earth to the Moon,” the cost of the project to launch people to the satellite of our planet was $1,865 (a huge amount for those times). Oddly enough, in 1969 terms, this is approximately equal to the cost of the Apollo 11 program.

By the way, it is interesting to note that the novel “Around the Moon,” which described the vicissitudes of the Columbiad journey, was written exactly 100 years before the Apollo 13 flight - in April 1970. In general, the novels “From the Earth to the Moon” and “Around the Moon” are more like not fiction, but a good journalistic report on the events seen.

The main complaint against Jules Verne is his terminology. “Do they really shoot at the moon from a cannon?” - ask skeptics who deny the possibility of Jules Verne traveling in a real time machine. Any modern scientist would have told him that the hero would have been killed by the initial acceleration. But readers would hardly understand Jules Verne if he began to describe in all the details the technology of launching a rocket from Baikonur or Cape Canaveral, especially since rockets were not taken very seriously in those days, and the idea of ​​​​a huge space gun excited the minds of the enlightened part of the Earth's population. But isn't the silo from which a ballistic missile is launched similar to a cannon? Yes, the same gun! It was the launch of such a rocket that Jules Verne described in his novels.

In the novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Verne described one of the forefathers of modern superheroes - the misanthropic Captain Nemo and his amazing submarine ship, the Nautilus. It is surprising that in those years when submarines were still extremely imperfect and had almost no practical use, Jules Verne was able to very accurately describe the structure of a submarine in the second half of the twentieth century. The famous Nautilus, on which the brave Captain Nemo made his journeys under the waves of the ocean, “has two hulls, one external, the other internal; they are connected to each other by iron beams having an I-section, which give the vessel extreme strength. In fact, thanks to this design, the vessel resists any pressure, like a monolith. The Nautilus owes its strength to its hull not to the rivets of its plating: the solidity of its structure was achieved by welding and ensured by the homogeneity of materials, which allows it to engage in single combat with the stormiest seas.

The electrical energy generated by the batteries is transmitted to the engine room and drives electric motors, which through a complex transmission system impart rotational motion to the propeller shaft. Watertight bulkheads and hermetically sealed doors served as reliable protection if a leak developed in any part of the submarine..."

But Jules Verne described the interior of the submarine incorrectly. When you read the novel, you get the impression that during a trip to the future he was not allowed inside the underwater ship and he looked at the prototype of his “Nautilus”, standing on the Kronstadt embankment or on the shore of the Sevastopol bay. But someone dedicated explained to the writer in detail how a submarine works.

In 1994, the grandson of Jules Verne found the manuscript of his famous grandfather's unpublished novel, which was called Paris in the Twentieth Century. In this novel, Jules Verne describes the subway, cars with an internal combustion engine running on hydrogen, faxes, computers, and much more. So he was here after all?

Bogdanov: utopia or reality

The future was described by another science fiction soothsayer, our compatriot - Russian writer, scientist and professional revolutionary Alexander Bogdanov (Malinovsky). In his famous utopian novel “Red Star,” published in 1908, as well as in its sequel, the novel “Engineer Manny,” Bogdanov also predicted sound cinema; and typewriters capable of taking dictation; and even digital machines that support production. The hero of the novel, a Russian revolutionary, invited by the Martians to visit their home planet, while taking a tour of the Martian ship, accidentally looked into the “computing” room, in which there were strange machines with many dials and hands. From the largest machine stretched a long ribbon, which obviously contained the results of calculations, but the signs on it, like on all the other dials, turned out to be unfamiliar to the guest. It is quite obvious that Bogdanov described in his novel the on-board computer that was on the spaceship.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Russian poet Velimir Khlebnikov promoted Wells’ invention in every possible way and even wrote a philosophical and mathematical work, “Boards of Fate,” in which he made an attempt to master the numerical laws of time. Not only was he completely serious about time travel and believed in the possibility of creating a time machine from mirrors, he described his journey to the Moscow of the future, which surprises with its coincidences with the real Moscow of the end of the last century: avenues with large buildings, a poplar house, which is very reminiscent of the Ostankino TV tower...

Is it possible to go back in time?

But if travel to the future is possible, then surely it is possible to travel to the past?

Medieval chronicles from time to time recorded the appearance here and there of unusually dressed people who behaved strangely and incomprehensibly. Often such journeys for aliens ended tragically. In 840, in medieval France in the city of Lyon, a crowd maddened with fear tore to pieces three strangers who had descended from a certain “devilish circle” - records of this were preserved in church archives. Unfortunately, they do not contain any descriptions of the apparatus, which may have been a time machine, and the “devil's circle” is a common metaphorical expression of that era. According to the testimony of the monks, who described the event in sufficient detail, the strangers who “appeared out of nowhere” assured that they were residents of Lyon and had only left for a short time to look at the amazing miracles. However, no matter how the authorities and clergy called, there was not a single person in the city who could identify them. And then Lyon was many times smaller than today, it had more than a thousand inhabitants.

Man from the Future

One of the most mysterious and enigmatic historical figures is the great Italian painter, sculptor, architect, scientist, engineer of the Renaissance Leonardo da Vinci.

According to the theory of some Western researchers, Da Vinci is a man from the distant future who went back in time in a time machine and suffered an accident, as a result of which he was unable to return back. Or didn't want to. In his works, Leonardo repeatedly turned to attempts to create a helicopter and a submarine. But the technology of the Renaissance was still very imperfect and there was too much missing, so all his attempts were inevitably doomed to failure. However, the inquisitive mind of the scientist persistently and diligently searches for the opportunity to create a universal loom, a breech-loading cannon, and a device for free swimming under water. He dreams of making a tank, a glider, builds impregnable fortresses and draws encrypted pictures. Some researchers believe that Sir Leonardo wandered around the timeline a lot before ending up in the Renaissance.

According to the description of contemporaries, he looked like a 17-year-old youth, unusually developed in all respects, including physically: he freely broke horseshoes, squeezing them in the palm of his left hand! Having excellent command of weapons and using fencing techniques unknown to his contemporaries, Leonardo never fought, fought in duels or married, although there is no information about his non-traditional sexual orientation. Was he really afraid that by his actions he would change the course of human history so that in the distant future he himself would not find a place in it?

Soviet experiments

In the twentieth century, many famous scientists tried to master the secrets of time. The problem of time travel was addressed by Albert Einstein, who back in 1943 tried to find out what time is made of. During an experiment known as the Philadelphia Experiment, Einstein tried to create a powerful electromagnetic cocoon of a destroyer around the Eldridge, as a result of which the destroyer first allegedly disappeared, and then instantly moved several hundred kilometers in space. Since no security measures were provided, the secret experiment ended tragically. Of the entire crew, only 21 people returned unharmed. 27 people literally became fused with the structure of the ship, 13 died from burns, radiation, electric shock and fear. Einstein burned his manuscripts out of fear that Time would be used as a weapon to harm Humanity.

The Soviet Union also conducted experiments on time. Professor Nikolai Aleksandrovich Kozyrev began designing a time machine under the direct supervision of Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria.

Many years later, Kozyrev’s experiments were repeated and improved by corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of Belarus Albert Iosifovich Veinik. But his scientific activity ended with the fact that he “went into religion”, taking a new name Victor, and he burned his scientific works and books, including on the physics of Time, at the stake in the courtyard of the academy. Perhaps, like Einstein, he really learned something that could be dangerous for Humanity?

Perhaps it was these fears that the American science fiction writer Isaac Asimov wrote about in his book “The End of Eternity.” It says that even a butterfly crushed by a time traveler's boot can cause the future to change. This means that, having changed the past, we return to the present and find ourselves in a completely new world.

Nevertheless, experiments to create a time machine continue. In early May, some media reported that engineers from the American space agency NASA had begun assembling an engine for a time machine. Experts have already conducted a number of experiments in a vacuum, which gave them the right to talk about the possibility of time jumps. The engine will be installed on spacecraft.

It must be said that the American project is far from the only option for a time machine. According to the Technology and Science website, today there are 42 time machine inventors in the world. True, we are still talking about theoretical ideas, but as soon as technologists are able to provide all the parameters necessary to build a time machine, production will begin immediately. Therefore, it is possible that in the very near future scientists will still be able to realize the dream of time travel, especially since there is plenty of evidence of such travel...

Jules Verne Scientific discoveries of a science fiction writer

Geography teacher "MKOU Sitsevskaya Secondary School"

Zvonareva I. Yu.

2015

Jules Verne 1828−1905

In total J. Verne wrote about

70 novels.

In them, he predicted scientific discoveries and inventions in a variety of fields, including submarines, scuba gear, television and space flight.

Of the 108 scientific foresights of J. Verne, more than half were implemented.

However, the main merit of this writer is the creation of the science fiction novel genre.

Verne's ideas influenced

K. E. Tsiolkovsky, V. A. Obruchev, D. I. Mendeleev, I. A. Efremova .

Jules Verne

Robur the Conqueror

The birth of J. Verne as a science fiction writer can be considered the autumn of 1862, when he wrote the novel “Five Weeks in a Balloon

The writer talked in it about the life of the capital of France in the second half of the 20th century. And what’s surprising is that he correctly predicted the development of the city. He was ahead of time by more than a hundred years.

" Whatever I write, whatever I invent, everything it will always be below actual capabilities person. The time will come when science will outstrip imagination." Jules Verne

One of the most famous predictions of the French writer is the book “Paris in the Twentieth Century,” which was found and published only in 1994. It instantly became a bestseller, and modern scholars realized that Verne was a talented seer.

It described skyscrapers, electric trains with enormous speeds, banks with computers, and even a global information network, albeit based on the telegraph.

And his book “From Russia to Beijing” quite accurately describes the construction of the trans-Asian highway .

Jules Verne was one of the first daredevils to talk about space flight. Writers and even scientists did not think about this until the nineteenth century.

The Columbiad shell was aluminum in the novel "From the Earth to the Moon" And it was aluminum alloys that were used to create the Apollo landing module.

“Yes, yes, there was a whole layer of oil on the water, and this oil floated along with the current of the Angara to Irkutsk.”

Signs of oil on Lake Baikal have been noticed for a long time. And the writer made her float along the Angara in large numbers.

The only “Russian” novel is “An Extraordinary Journey from Moscow to Irkutsk or Mikhail Strogoff,” which reflects Siberia: nature, people, everyday life. This book was first published in Paris in 1875

The descriptions of the cities, rivers, and villages encountered by the heroes of the novel are given by the author in the main. The description of the Nizhny Novgorod fair is distinguished by its picturesqueness, depth and sufficient verisimilitude; it is a picture complete colors, humor.

This year's work is Jules Verne's "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea." celebrates its 145th anniversary.

In 1898, Jules Verne mentioned in an interview with journalist A. Brusson that Georges Sand gave him the idea of ​​the novel. In a letter written in the fall of 1865, she advised him to write a book about traveling in the depths of the ocean in a submarine.

Undoubtedly, the writing of the novel was also influenced by Jules Verne’s close acquaintance with the inventor of the “semi-submersible ship” Jean-François Conseil. The author gave his name to one of the heroes of the novel. And the name “Nautilus” was given to the submarine that the American inventor Robert Fulton offered to Napoleon at the beginning of the 19th century as a secret weapon against England.

By force of circumstances, the professor reveals a secret that has worried the world - the monster turns out to be an underwater ship, a miracle of engineering, the insight of a brilliant inventor.

The creator and owner of the underwater ship called "Nautilus", the ruler of the entire underwater world is Captain Nemo. This is exactly how he introduced himself to Professor Aronnax, obviously not wanting to reveal his real name (Latin nemo means no one).

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is an amazing circumnavigation of the world, carried out by the inhabitants of an underwater ship, perfectly suited for both recreation and scientific pursuits. The captain took with him to the depths of the seas a collection of painting masterpieces, a huge library and supplemented all this with a collection of wonders found at the bottom of the oceans.

However, he did not completely break the connection with those who remained on land: from time to time the Nautilus approaches the shore, and mysterious boxes are handed over to someone from the side of the ship. And Professor Aronnax understands that N. is helping those who are fighting for freedom by giving them the treasures of the Nautilus.

Novel AND . Verna"Mysterious Island "

The new underwater laboratory will make it a reality novels Jules

Three Rings Design office. Similar to "Nautilus" from the novel by Jules Verne

In the novels of Jude Verne, readers found not only an enthusiastic description of technology and travel, but bright, lively images of noble heroes, cute eccentric scientists.

This is a worthy example to follow

modern youth.

No matter what I write, no matter what I invent, all this will always be below the actual capabilities of a person. The time will come when science will outstrip imagination.

Jules Verne

Jules Verne is considered not only one of the founders of science fiction, but also a writer who, like no one else, knew how to predict the future. There are few authors who would do as much to popularize science and progress as the great Frenchman. Today, in the 21st century, we can judge how often he was right - or wrong.

From a cannon to the moon

Verne sent three travelers to the Moon - the same number were on the crew of each Apollo. The Columbiad projectile was aluminum - and it was aluminum alloys that were used to create the Apollo lander.

Young Jules Verne

One of Verne's boldest prophecies is space travel. Of course, the Frenchman was not the first author to send his heroes to the celestial spheres. But before him, literary astronauts flew only miraculously. For example, in the middle of the 17th century, the English priest Francis Godwin wrote the utopia “Man on the Moon”, the hero of which went to the satellite with the help of fantastic birds. Except that Cyrano de Bergerac flew to the Moon not only on horseback, but also with the help of a primitive analogue of a rocket. However, writers did not think about the scientific basis for space flight until the 19th century.

The first who seriously undertook to send a man into space without the help of “devilishness” was precisely Jules Verne - he naturally relied on the power of the human mind. However, in the sixties of the last century, people could only dream of space exploration, and science had not yet seriously addressed this issue. The French writer had to fantasize solely at his own peril and risk. Verne decided that the best way to send a man into space would be a giant cannon, the projectile of which would serve as a passenger module.

One of the main problems of the “lunar cannon” project is connected with the projectile. Verne himself understood perfectly well that the astronauts would experience serious overloads at the moment of the shot. This can be seen from the fact that the heroes of the novel “From the Earth to the Moon” tried to protect themselves with the help of soft wall coverings and mattresses. Needless to say, all this in reality would not have saved a person who decided to repeat the feat of the members of the “Cannon Club”.

However, even if the travelers managed to ensure safety, two more practically insoluble problems would remain. Firstly, a gun capable of launching a projectile of such mass into space must be simply fantastic in length. Secondly, even today it is impossible to provide a cannon projectile with a starting speed that allows it to overcome the gravity of the Earth. Finally, the writer did not take into account air resistance - although against the background of other problems with the idea of ​​​​a space gun, this already seems like a trifle.

At the same time, it is impossible to overestimate the influence that Verne’s novels had on the origin and development of astronautics. The French writer predicted not only the journey to the Moon, but also some of its details - for example, the dimensions of the “passenger module”, the number of crew members and the approximate cost of the project. Verne became one of the main inspirations of the space age. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky spoke about him:

The desire for space travel was instilled in me by the famous dreamer J. Verne. He awakened the brain in this direction.

Ironically, it was Tsiolkovsky at the beginning of the 20th century who finally substantiated the incompatibility of Verne’s idea with manned astronautics.

The ISS crew delivered Jules Verne's manuscripts into orbit

Bringing Fantasy to Life: Space Gun

Almost a hundred years after the release of Man on the Moon, the space gun project has found new life. In 1961, the US and Canadian departments of defense launched the joint HARP project. His goal was to create guns that would allow scientific and military satellites to be launched into low orbit. It was assumed that the “supergun” would significantly reduce the cost of launching satellites - to only a few hundred dollars per kilogram of useful weight.

By 1967, a team led by ballistic weapons specialist Gerald Bull had created a dozen prototypes of a space gun and learned to launch projectiles to an altitude of 180 kilometers - despite the fact that in the United States, space flight is considered to be beyond 100 kilometers. However, political differences between the United States and Canada led to the closure of the project. Now the HARP cannon is abandoned and overgrown with rust.

This failure did not put an end to the idea of ​​a space gun. Until the end of the 20th century, several more attempts were made to create it. But so far no one has managed to launch a cannon shell into Earth orbit.

Submarine

In fact, Jules Verne most often anticipated not the emergence of new technologies, but the direction of development of existing ones. This can be most clearly demonstrated by the example of the famous Nautilus.

The first projects and even working prototypes of underwater vessels appeared long before Verne himself was born. Moreover, by the time he began work on 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, the first mechanical submarine, which was christened the Diver, had already been launched in France, and Verne was collecting information about it before he began writing the novel.

But what was the “Diver”? A crew of 12 people could hardly fit on board the ship; it could dive no more than 10 meters and reach a speed of only 4 knots underwater.

Against this background, the characteristics and capabilities of the Nautilus looked absolutely incredible. Comfortable as an ocean liner, and perfectly suited for long expeditions, the submarine had a diving depth of several kilometers and a top speed of 50 knots.

Fantastic! And so far. As happened more than once with Verne, he overestimated the capabilities of not only contemporary but also future technologies. Even nuclear submarines of the 21st century are not able to compete in speed with the Nautilus and repeat the maneuvers that it performed playfully.

Nor can they go without refueling and replenishing supplies for as long as the Nautilus could. And, of course, today’s submarines can never be handled by one person - and Nemo continued to sail on the Nautilus even after he lost his entire crew. On the other hand, the ship did not have an air regeneration system; to replenish its supply, Captain Nemo needed to rise to the surface every five days.

Despite all this, one cannot help but admit that Verne foresaw the general trends in the development of submarines with amazing accuracy. The ability of submarines to make long autonomous journeys, large-scale battles between them, exploration of the depths of the sea with their help, and even a trip under the ice to the Pole (the North Pole, of course, not the South Pole - Verne was wrong here) - all this has become a reality. True, only in the second half of the 20th century with the advent of technologies that Verne had never even dreamed of - in particular, nuclear energy. The world's first nuclear submarine was symbolically dubbed the Nautilus.

In 2006, Exomos created a working submarine that is as close as possible to the literary Nautilus, at least in terms of appearance. The ship is used to entertain tourists visiting Dubai.

Bringing Fantasy to Life: Floating City

In the novel “The Floating Island,” the French novelist made a prediction that has not yet come true, but very soon may come true. The action of this book took place on an artificial island, on which the richest people on Earth tried to create a man-made paradise for themselves.

The Seasteading Institute organization is ready to implement this idea these days. It intends to create not just one, but several floating city-states by 2014. They will have sovereignty and live by their own liberal laws, which should make them extremely attractive for business. One of the sponsors of the project is the founder of the PayPal payment system, Peter Thiel, known for his libertarian views.

Aircrafts

To talk about the conquest of the air element, Verne came up with Robur the conqueror. This unrecognized genius is somewhat reminiscent of Nemo, but devoid of romance and nobility. First, Robur created the Albatross aircraft, which rose into the air using propellers. Although outwardly the Albatross looked more like an ordinary ship, it can rightfully be considered the “grandfather” of helicopters.

And in the novel “Lord of the World,” Robur developed an absolutely incredible vehicle. His "Terrible" was a universal machine: it moved with equal ease through the air, land, water and even under water - and at the same time it could move at a speed of about 200 miles per hour (this sounds funny these days, but Verne believed that such The car will become invisible to the human eye). This universal machine remained the writer’s invention. Is science lagging behind Verne? It's not just that. Such a station wagon is simply impractical and unprofitable.

Attempts have been made to create a hybrid aircraft and submarine. And, oddly enough, successful ones. In the 1930s, Soviet designers tried to “teach” a seaplane how to scuba dive, but the project was not completed. But in the USA in 1968, at the New York industrial exhibition, a prototype of the Aeroship flying submarine was demonstrated. This technical wonder has never found practical application.

Hitler and weapons of mass destruction

Jules Verne passed away in 1905 and did not see the horror of the world wars. But he, like many of his contemporaries, sensed the approaching era of large-scale conflicts and the emergence of new destructive types of weapons. And, of course, the French science fiction writer tried to predict what they would turn out to be like.

Verne paid serious attention to the theme of war and weapons in the novel “Five Hundred Million Begums.” He made the main villain of the book the German professor Schulze, an obsessive nationalist with a thirst for world domination. Schulze invented a giant cannon capable of hitting a target many kilometers away, and developed poisonous gas projectiles for it. Thus, Verne anticipated the advent of chemical weapons. And in the novel “Flag of the Motherland,” the Frenchman even depicted the “Fulgurator Rock” super-shell, capable of destroying any building within a radius of thousands of square meters - the analogy with a nuclear bomb literally suggests itself.

At the same time, Vern preferred to look into the future with optimism. The dangerous inventions in his books, as a rule, ruined their own creators - just as the insidious Schulze died from a freezing bomb. In reality, alas, anyone suffered from weapons of mass destruction, but not their creators.

The gas created by Professor Schulze could instantly freeze all living things. But Hitler's predecessor was let down by the unreliability of his inventions.

The appearance of the 20th century

At the dawn of his career, in 1863, the then little-known Jules Verne wrote the novel Paris in the Twentieth Century, in which he tried to predict what the world would look like a century later. Unfortunately, perhaps Verne’s most prophetic work not only did not receive recognition during the writer’s lifetime, but also saw the light only at the end of that very 20th century.

The first reader of “Paris in the 20th Century” - the future publisher of “Extraordinary Journeys” - Pierre-Jules Etzel rejected the manuscript. Partly due to purely literary shortcomings - the writer was still inexperienced - and partly because Etzel considered Verne’s forecasts too incredible and pessimistic. The editor was confident that readers would find the book completely implausible. The novel was first published only in 1994, when readers could already appreciate the visionary insight of the science fiction writer.

In the Paris of “tomorrow,” skyscrapers rose, people traveled on high-speed electric trains, and criminals were executed by electric shock. Banks used computers that instantly performed complex arithmetic operations. Of course, when describing the 20th century, the writer was based on the achievements of his contemporaries. For example, the entire planet is entangled in a global information network, but it is based on an ordinary telegraph.

But even without wars, the world of the 20th century looks pretty gloomy. We are accustomed to believe that Verne was inspired by scientific and technological progress and glorified it. And “Paris in the 20th Century” shows us a society where high technology is combined with a miserable life. People only care about progress and profit. Culture has been consigned to the dustbin of history, music, literature and painting have been forgotten. Here, fortunately, Verne greatly exaggerated the colors.

Among other things, Paris in the 20th Century anticipated the “theory of containment” developed by the American diplomat George Kennan only in the 1940s. Verne assumed that with the advent of weapons capable of destroying the entire planet in several countries, wars would come to an end. As we know, the science fiction writer was in a hurry here: there are plenty of local armed conflicts today.

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Of course, many of his predictions now seem naive. But few prophets in history managed to predict so accurately how technical thought and progress would develop.

Contemporaries of Verne

Albert Robida: Visionary Artist

If a Frenchman of the late 19th - early 20th centuries were asked who most convincingly describes the future, then the name “Albert Robida” would be mentioned along with the name “Jules Verne”. This writer and artist also made amazing guesses about the technologies of the future, and he was credited with an almost supernatural gift of foresight.

Robida predicted that not a single home of the future would be complete without a “telephonoscope,” which would broadcast the latest news 24 hours a day. He described devices that resemble prototypes of modern communicators. Along with Verne, Robida was one of the first to talk about chemical weapons and super-powerful bombs, which, despite their small size, would have incredible destructive power. In his drawings and books, Robida often depicted flying cars that would replace ground transport. That prediction hasn't come true—yet. Let's hope that over time it will come true.

Thomas Edison: The Word of a Scientist

Not only science fiction writers tried to predict in which direction scientific thought would develop. In 1911, the outstanding inventor Thomas Edison, a contemporary of Verne, was asked to tell how he saw the world a hundred years later.

Of course, he gave the most accurate forecast as far as his area was concerned. Steam, he said, was on its last days, and in the future all equipment, in particular high-speed trains, will run exclusively on electricity. And the main means of transportation will be “giant flying machines capable of moving at a speed of two hundred miles per hour.”

Edison believed that in the 21st century all houses and their interior decoration would be made of steel, which would then be given a resemblance to certain materials. The books, according to the inventor, will be made of ultra-light nickel. So in one volume a couple of centimeters thick and weighing several hundred grams, more than forty thousand pages can fit - for example, the entire Encyclopedia Britannica.

Finally, Edison prophesied the invention of... the philosopher's stone. He believed that humanity would learn to easily turn iron into gold, which would become so cheap that we could even make taxis and ocean liners from it.

Alas, the imagination of even such outstanding people as Edison is greatly limited by the framework of their contemporary world. Even the forecasts of science fiction writers who wrote only fifteen to twenty years ago are already difficult to perceive without a condescending smile. Against this background, Edison's foresight looks impressive.